News Release: 1 February 1999

"John Singer Sargent" on View at the National Gallery of Art, 21 February - 31 May 1999

Washington, DC--The first major retrospective since the memorial exhibition in 1926 of the work of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) will be on view at the National Gallery of Art, West Building, 21 February through 31 May 1999. One hundred and fifteen paintings and watercolors from public and private collections around the world will include many of his most significant and beautiful works.

This is the first large scale exhibition of Sargent's art to be shown in both England, where it was on view at the Tate Gallery, London, 15 October 1998 through 17 January 1999, and the United States, where it will also be seen at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 23 June through 26 September 1999.

The exhibition has been organized by the Tate Gallery, London, in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

This exhibition is made possible by Ford Motor Company.

It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

"An astute portraitist, Sargent painted many of the leading personalities of the age in works of great elegance and panache," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. "He was a brilliant technician who could quickly combine a complex composition with the appearance of life itself."

"Ford Motor Company is proud to sponsor the John Singer Sargent exhibition. As a strong supporter of the arts, we believe they enrich our lives and our communities and help to promote mutual understanding among nations," said W.C. Ford, Jr., Chairman of the Board, Ford Motor Company. "We are confident that this exhibition will increase that enrichment and understanding."

The Exhibition

The exhibition is in general arranged chronologically to reflect the main phases of Sargent's work. On view are his early portrait, landscape, and figure sketches, 1874-1884; portraits and subject pictures, 1878-1884; experiments with impressionism, 1883-1889; commissioned American and British society portraits, 1890-1917; landscape and figure subjects, 1900-1914; late landscape oils and watercolors of Venice and Switzerland, 1880-1925; and World War I paintings, including Gassed (1918-1919). Among his best known and beloved works in the exhibition are the "notorious" Madame X (1883-1884), The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882), and Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1885-1886).

Raised in Europe in an American expatriate family constantly on the move, Sargent studied at art schools in Florence, Dresden, Berlin, and Paris. Precociously gifted, he assimilated lessons from the old masters and realists and the contemporary impressionists and symbolists, to create his own style and become one of the great painters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Portraiture, ranging from bold experimentation to studied formality, dominated Sargent's career. Quickly winning fame and fortune as the most admired and sought-after portrait painter on both sides of the Atlantic, he was claimed by both the British and Americans as one of their own. Portraits in the exhibition, which reflect Sargent's mastery of psychological expressiveness, physical presence, and social position, include Lord Ribblesdale (1902), Sir Frank Swettenham (1904), and Self-portrait (1906). There is also a fascinating group of portraits of Sargent's illustrious American contemporaries: Frederick Law Olmstead (1895), landscape architect who designed the grounds around the U.S. Capitol; his friend, Henry James (1913), novelist of the Edwardian Age; and John D. Rockefeller (1917), businessman and philanthropist.

One gallery in the exhibition is devoted to Sargent's brief experimentation with impressionism and includes paintings such as those of his friends Claude Monet Painting at the Edge of a Wood (1885?) and Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife (1889).

Sargent was also a prolific landscape and figure artist who painted a dazzling range of more than one thousand oils and watercolors. Traveling extensively in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, he was intrigued most of all by Venice with its architectural splendor, sunlight, and iridescent water as can be seen in Corner of the Church of San Stae, Venice (c. 1913), The Rialto, Venice (c. 1911), and other Venetian works in the exhibition.

Also on view are Sargent's early subject paintings, inspired by journeys to different parts of Europe and the Mediterranean, such as A Capriote (1878), a poetic study of a young girl painted in Capri, and the mysterious Fumée d'ambre gris (1880), based on his travels to Morocco.

Sargent was equally adept at painting watercolors, which he did profusely for his own amusement and interest. Although he made little effort to sell them commercially, he achieved recognition as a watercolorist as a result of major purchases by the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1909 and 1912, respectively. On the Grand Canal (c. 1907), View from a Window, Genoa (c. 1911), and Graveyard in the Tyrol (1914) are examples in the exhibition of Sargent's fluency in the watercolor medium.

Curators

The exhibition has been organized by leading Sargent scholars Richard Ormond, director of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, great-nephew of the artist, and Elaine Kilmurray, who are co-authors of the Sargent catalogue raisonné (Volume I, Early Portraits, published by Yale University Press, 1998). Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., senior curator of American and British paintings, National Gallery of Art, is the coordinator of the exhibition in Washington.

Catalogue

A lavishly illustrated catalogue, Sargent, published by the Tate Gallery and edited by Elaine Kilmurray and Richard Ormond, accompanies the exhibition. The catalogue presents a survey of the huge diversity of Sargent's output with reproductions of two hundred works and essays exploring the artist's life and his development as an artist.

Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company has also sponsored the following exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art: The Treasure Houses of Britain: Five Hundred Years of Private Patronage and Art Collecting (November 1985-April 1986), The Pastoral Landscape: The Legacy of Venice (November 1988-January 1989), The Art of Paolo Veronese 1528-1588 (November 1988-February 1989), The Drawings of Jasper Johns (May-July 1990), and A Great Heritage: Renaissance and Baroque Drawings from Chatsworth (October-December 1995), and in addition, the educational programs: Multiple Visit Program, 1994, and Art Around the Corner, 1996.

General Information

The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden are at all times free to the public. They are located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, and are open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Gallery is closed on December 25 and January 1. For information call (202) 737-4215 or the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) at (202) 842-6176, or visit the Gallery's Web site at www.nga.gov.

Visitors will be asked to present all carried items for inspection upon entering the East and West Buildings. Checkrooms are free of charge and located at each entrance. Luggage and other oversized bags must be presented at the 4th Street entrances to the East or West Building to permit x-ray screening and must be deposited in the checkrooms at those entrances. For the safety of visitors and the works of art, nothing may be carried into the Gallery on a visitor's back. Any bag or other items that cannot be carried reasonably and safely in some other manner must be left in the checkrooms. Items larger than 17 x 26 inches cannot be accepted by the Gallery or its checkrooms.

For additional press information please call or send inquiries to:

Press Office
National Gallery of Art
2000B South Club Drive
Landover, MD 20785
phone: (202) 842-6353 e-mail: pressinfo@nga.gov

Deborah Ziska
Chief of Press and Public Information
(202) 842-6353
ds-ziska@nga.gov

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